Events

Sunday, May 5 2013

Kansas City’s story doesn’t begin with fur traders and settlers. Rather it goes back millions of years to an era of rising and falling seas, thick green forests of towering ferns, and huge, now-extinct animals. That world, as revealed by the rocks beneath our feet, is explored in the exhibit KC|BC.

KC|BC complements Kansas City Millions of Years Ago – Reading the Rocks, a current show of digital illustrations and actual fossils at the Box Gallery in Suite 211 of the Commerce Bank Building, 1000 Walnut St.

In the pre-digital era before cell phones, satellites, and the Internet allowed travelers to instantly transmit their photos and comments to family and friends, Americans relied on “snail mail” and the picture postcard.

This exhibit gathers more than 200 examples of Kansas City postcards from the ‘30s and ‘40s. The cards – featuring images of landmarks, hotels, parks, and public buildings - have been drawn from the Mrs. Sam Ray Postcard Collection in the holdings of the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections.

Established in 1874, the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department has for 138 years protected our citizens while keeping abreast of changes in criminology, transportation, technology, and society. This long and colorful history is examined in a new exhibit, Kansas City’s Finest.

Hixon transformed the field of portrait photography in Kansas City and the surrounding region during a career that spanned more than seven decades. His studios—the first in the Brady Building at 11th and Main Streets, and the second just one block west in the Baltimore Hotel—welcomed thousands of patrons throughout the 1910s and 1920s.

Hollywood has long been known as the Dream Factory. But what happens when the dream dies?

That's the story told by director Billy Wilder in Sunset Boulevard, which finds a broke screenwriter (William Holden) becoming the kept boy toy of a fading silent movie star (Gloria Swanson) who is so bent on a comeback that she's sliding into madness.

This postcard tour of a bygone era offers views of Independence Boulevard (Kansas City’s first boulevard) and the rugged beauty of the city’s only urban Scenic Byway, Cliff Drive. Other featured spots include the Concourse, the Kansas City Museum, and breathtaking vistas across the Missouri River Valley.

Local historian and postcard collector Michael Bushnell presents a series of postcard tours of Kansas City neighborhoods. Bushnell is publisher of The Northeast News, a weekly community newspaper that serves the Historic Northeast area of Kansas City. He is also the author of Historic Postcards of Old Kansas City.

Author Mary Collins Barile observes Cinco de Mayo with a look at the colorful history of the Santa Fe Trail and its importance to the Kansas City region. For decades in the early 19th century this economic and cultural conduit linked the frontier settlements of Missouri with the colonies of Mexico, and was the invasion route of U.S. military forces during the Mexican-American War of 1846.